i3 Overclocking... first thoughts @ 4200mhz

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Ok...

I got this little CPU from OcUK last week as my old PSU died and it encouraged me to buy a whole new system.

I went for:

i3 530
Gigabyte H55 UD3H
Corsair 2x2gb XMS3 Cas9
Corsair 650 Modular PSU
Arctic Cooler 7
Asus 5770

THis was a relatively inexpensive upgrade and so far, it's loads better than the A64 X2 4800+ it replaces.

Anyway, on to overclocking.

I have always used water cooling or Mach II Gt etc but this time I wanted silence and that's what I have... not a sound from my system so far.

Anyway, I started with a few bits of tweaking and need to push the RAM harder I'm sure but 4.2ghz with 1.3v on the CPU.

I'm still not sure of this QPI lark and not sure if the QPI needs any extra voltage but at 4.2ghz on 1.3v the CPU is stable after 5 hours of Prime95. I'll be trying more later but if any of you have any advice or tips for this CPU, I'd love to hear from you :)

4200mhz.jpg
 
i3 530
Gigabyte H55 UD3H
Corsair 2x2gb XMS3 Cas9
Corsair 650 Modular PSU
Arctic Cooler 7
Asus 5770

i3 @ 4.2GHz is impressive, nice work.

I love the 5770s... :D

Arctic Cooler is a nice little cooler.

2 Corsair brands... are you crazy?! That's too many quality products in there.
 
I'm really chuffed with this so far... full load temps (Prime95 on both cores) on silent air cooling are only 53.c seems pretty good!

What clocks have you other guys seen so far?

I know I am underclocking my RAM at the mo... would I be better placed trying to get an overclock on the RAM too... therefore getting more bandwidth?
 
Definitely worth overclocking the RAM since youre already overclocking the CPU, would silly not to. :P

http://www.overclockers.com/3-step-guide-overclock-core-i3-i5-i7/

^^This guide describes the QPI better than i can.

Also some other handy info for volts.

But yeah nice clock, plan on getting myself a i3 530, roughly the same spec.
And push for 4.5Ghz.
But glad to see you have pletty of head room with that low voltage.
 
With i3's most people find the sweet spot to be around 4.0-4.2GHz, past that it usually needs a big bump in Vcore to get any more.

Great chips aren't they! I've got mind on a Corsair H50 with a very low RPM fan and load temps are ~40C. Silent and cool :D

As for QPI just set it at 2.8/3.2GHz, either will be fine, i've tried all the way up to 4GHz and as far as I can tell it just doesn't improve anything being higher (absolutely no change in benchmarks), so don't bother straining it for nothing.

I run it at 3.2 personally.

You might find that when you start to take your memory speed up and latencies down you might need more Vcore (or to give the on chip GPU more voltage), as the memory controller is on the CPU, and as such when you start stressing it more it could need a bit more volts.
 
Great, thanks for your help!

I've been trying 4.4ghz tonight and it's not super stable at 1.295vCore... either of the QPI was too high.

I'm not sure I fancy more than 1.3vCore in my CPU for 24/7 so I think I'll now try and work with my memory a little more.

Really great little CPU for the money :)
 
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